It is known that managing a healthy lifestyle is important, but what is the healthy lifestyle, how is it adopted and what is the connection between it and psychological factors?
A healthy lifestyle is a term that is not clear. Is subjective and influenced by the beliefs and values of the individual. According to the prevailing view, a healthy lifestyle includes life habits that promote physical health. As part of a healthy lifestyle, there is usually strict adherence to a balanced diet that allows maintaining a healthy body weight, performing sports activities, maintaining adequate hours of sleep, and the like. A healthy lifestyle also includes unique diets and taking appropriate medication in cases of chronic diseases. Hundreds of studies have shown that a healthy lifestyle is essential, but trying to maintain such a lifestyle soon reveals that it is not so simple.
Why is it difficult for us to adopt a lifestyle that contributes to our health and our positive feelings? The way of life in Western society in general, and in Israel in particular, places a system of temptations in front of the average person and presents him with a variety of difficulties in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The abundance of fast-food restaurants, the long day's work and the cultural expectation of balancing career and family are among the factors that make adopting a healthy lifestyle a difficult task. In addition to this, the constant pressure of Israelis due to the complex security situation, the adoption of a healthy and relaxed lifestyle composed of a calm and balanced life, healthy cooking and sporting activities for the whole family, does not always feel like something achievable.
The psychology of a healthy lifestyle
Despite the abundance of temptations and difficulties, a healthy lifestyle is possible. It's true that most people do not have a hundred percent healthy lifestyle, but many manage to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The key to a healthy lifestyle, contrary to what many of us think, is not finding the perfect diet or winning the lottery to reduce working hours. The secret lies in the psychological-emotional aspects of our self-perception and our ability to change habits. For example, a diabetic who forgets repeatedly to take the essential drugs to save his life or a girl who is struggling with her excess weight.
On the face of it, this is a case of casual forgetfulness and the struggle for calories that many of us know. However, a closer look will reveal significant emotional aspects that affect the difficulty in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. A diabetic patient, for example, may turn out to be a person who is accustomed to perceiving himself as strong and healthy and therefore will not agree to recognize his illness, when this refusal is expressed in the absence of medication. Similarly, the difficulty of coping with the diet may be manifested not only as a natural and logical difficulty in changing habits and delaying gratification, but also as an unconscious tool for avoiding intimacy: the girl may experience fears and difficulties in the sexual and sexual domains and the extra weight gives her an unconscious "excuse" for not making connections. In other words, quite a few difficulties in creating a healthy lifestyle are caused by psychological factors that will enable adoption of a healthy lifestyle.
Another aspect of the relationship between a healthy lifestyle and psychology - the fact that a healthy lifestyle is not only about the health of the body but also about mental health. A person who maintains a balanced diet and athletic activity but suffers from panic attacks, constant stress or depression can not be defined as having a healthy lifestyle, because the body and mind often affect one another. For this reason, building a healthy lifestyle requires not only a change in the nutritional menu, but also a change in our personal "menu" and testing whether it includes rest time, interpersonal relationships, emotional difficulties and attention to leisure and pleasure.
Thus, creating a healthy lifestyle is of great importance in all aspects: proper nutrition, sports activity, maintaining proper weight and preventing obesity, reasonable physical fitness, the ability to perform daily movements without difficulty, promoting health (preventing illness), maintaining personal hygiene, Self-care, body care, maintaining a clean and esthetic environment, vitality, good mood, and this is only a partial list of variables related to a healthy lifestyle.
Obesity is one of the major epidemics affecting the high rates of morbidity in the Western world, which have yet to be resolved. A healthy lifestyle is a concept that includes a large number of variables. In the 21st century, the population in the Western world became more "sitting" and less active (called a sedentary lifestyle). This starts from kindergarten, continuing to elementary and high school, and hence the way to become inactive adults who are overweight and exposed to various health problems is short. The number of motor activities that a person is required to perform on a decreasing day of the day: extensive use of the car, various accessories in the home, multiple viewing on television, the Internet and the computer all reduce the activity of modern man. Another cause of obesity is the fast food that children and adults consume.
In order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, the body must be maintained regularly from a young age and throughout life. The value we receive on this investment is invaluable and will be reflected in the excellent functioning of the various physical systems such as: heart, lung and blood vessels, muscles and bones. Exercise and proper nutrition can cause the different physical systems to function better. For example, a 60-year-old man who has maintained a healthy lifestyle for decades can be seen and his body systems function like those of a person younger than him in many years. In this case, the physiological age is lower than the chronological age. This can be achieved if we maintain a healthy lifestyle.
In recent years we have been talking about a healthy lifestyle. We should note that a healthy lifestyle is called Wellness, but in practice the more accurate translation of Wellness is in Hebrew: "best." According to experts in the field were determined components of the lifestyle arranged in the form of a wheel. below:
The circle of a complete healthy lifestyle
The concept is that health does not mean the absence of illness, but rather is a complex of interactions between body, mind, emotion, society and the environment. The systemic approach that leads to growth is very important. It is also important to look at all the factors (multidimensional) and the interaction between the components (mentioned above) because when one of the components in the chain system is damaged or at risk, the health risk also increases accordingly. The healthy lifestyle cycle includes several variables.